Cortes And The School Bus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttling#Hernán_Cortés_(1519)

              This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

              MM is a secondary school student and every morning, after several stops, the school bus picks MM at home, then after few more stops and 50mn reaches the school.

              While very independent minded, MM is also deeply addicted to moral hazard which means that preparing the school bag, the clothes as well as everything else that could be proactively arranged the previous night is ...left to the last minute.

Also MM school did insist on the RIGHTS of children, but clearly less on their obligations to their parents, adults and the world at large so as a result of this MM never goes down early ready to jump in the school bus upon its arrival but typically, it's up to the bus to wait few minutes until MM goes down and boards the school bus.

              Needless to say, the repeated comments from MM's parents over years have been totally ineffective....borderline counterproductive driving them crazy and tired.

              One might wonder if all the other students were to behave the same way as MM, would the school bus ever reach the school on time? Maybe it's like everybody in a movie theatre assuming that in case of fire they will ALL be first through the exit door (sounds pretty much like financial markets nowadays). Maybe MM has overlooked that this behavior has wider consequences than affecting the parents well-being via some misplaced teenager "affirmative action" behavior...instead of trying to learn from them (likely costly in the long run). Doing the opposite of what parents said was also a cost for all school bus schoolmates. Maybe MM  overlooked this.

              Maybe MM was simply challenging Einstein (who could not care less) about his time-space-speed equations assuming that for MM, time would kindly oblige and slow down accordingly when needed, some kind of General Relativity MM remix. Maybe MM had overlooked something there too.

              This year something new happened. The school, which has premises scattered all around town went the extra mile adding further entropy (very predictable consequence of past moral hazard actions/inactions...but only a deranged mind would think about that proactively I assume) with another building in a very different place...resulting in students being even more scattered around town....and the bus company having problems getting a critical mass of students per bus to each of those locations from the clusters where the school students are living.

              For the parents of MM, the school bus economics were now making no sense at all (kind of trying to buy an insurance policy as the fire is already in the house) and as MM was perfectly capable for years to take the MTR and public minibus (at any time of day and night; NB: this is not Paris! Hint: it is an Asian city), they gave up on the school bus option.

              So for already one month MM has been taking a public minibus (unlikely to wait), the MTR (yada), and a public minibus (yada)...and according to the school has not been late at school, subject to one rounding error!

              However some mitigating comments might be needed.

              While I have always been a great fan of Nassim Taleb (got all his books since the 90s and consider them as Must-Read) I am skeptical about "Skin In The Game". For cold blooded people, among others, having skin in the game is unlikely to trigger incremental smarter risk management decisions (in fact the Nasdaq bubble proved just the opposite with insanity leading under stress to more insanity, i.e. was WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers wiser because he had all his skin in that game?)....while adding more unnecessary risks might be counter-productive.

                   However it is clear that for Moral Hazard addicts removing simply any possible hedge might improve the outcome. In case of problems, Darwin can settle the case.

               Anyway no wonder why Cortes burnt the school bus!